Cheney Strives to Keep Putting Her Stamp on History

With a long
list of accomplishments and identities—author, scholar, pundit,
federal humanities chief, and wife of Vice President Dick
Cheney—perhaps it is the status awarded her by her young
granddaughter that Lynne V. Cheney cherishes most these days.

"‘Grandma of the United States,’ now that’s a
title to be pretty proud of," Mrs. Cheney said recently in recounting
the 4-year-old’s musings.

It is not an image that longtime observers of Mrs. Cheney’s
work would likely choose. Yet in her meetings with schoolchildren, like
the class of local 4th graders that met here last week to discuss books
on American history, Mrs. Cheney has engaged students with warm,
grandmotherly tones, sharing stories from the past and their lessons
for the future.

As with her latest books—America: A Patriotic Primer
and A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American
Women—the former chairman of the National Endowment for the
Humanities has been targeting a younger audience in her efforts to
promote learning about history.

Since moving into the vice president’s residence in 2001, Mrs.
Cheney has invited children there to commemorate historical milestones
and celebrate the Founding Fathers. She has visited schools to share
her favorite historical narratives, particularly those of her own
ancestors and the ones illustrated in her popular children’s
books, whose proceeds benefit charity. And she has created an awards
program to recognize authors of outstanding historical books for
children.

Delivering Jabs

Lynne V. Cheney autographs one of
her books last week in front of pieces of the Berlin Wall in an
Arlington, Va., park.
—Photograph by Allison Shelley/Education Week

But despite the kinder, gentler image she has projected among children
and parents, Mrs. Cheney has not gone soft. As a senior fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank,
she still lives up to her longer-held reputation as a razor-sharp
critic in pushing for rigorous academic standards and traditional
content and instruction. She has inveighed against progressive
educational approaches and derided critics of strict testing and
accountability.

Dietrich Weismann, the chairman of the Manhattan Institute, praised
Mrs. Cheney recently as "one of America’s most distinguished
intellectual thinkers." The institute invited her to speak to a select
audience at a New York City hotel last month about President
Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act.

Mrs. Cheney used the forum to kick up her rhetoric for the 2004
presidential campaign. After citing what she described as stellar
examples of the effectiveness of the Bush-Cheney administration’s
ambitious school improvement law, she devoted a large portion of her
remarks to a reproach of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the
presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and his diminishing
support for the law, which he voted for in 2001.

"Looking over John Kerry’s various stances on education
reform, a writer for Boston magazine has called his record
‘a desert of ambiguity,’ " she said. "Certainly, it’s
hard to come up with a satisfying explanation for his change of heart
about No Child Left Behind."

Back to Work

The address was squeezed in among her paid job at the AEI and her
unpaid duties as the vice president’s spouse. Mrs. Cheney, 62,
maintains a busy schedule of events related to those roles, as well as
those involving the promotion of her books.

All this is in addition to the admitted strain that post-9/11
security concerns—which have forced her husband to work and live
periodically in undisclosed locations—have had on her family
life.

Other wives of recent vice presidents have also championed causes.
Tipper Gore promoted mental-health issues during her husband’s
vice presidency. Marilyn Quayle, a lawyer by profession, devoted her
time in the first Bush administration to charitable work, particularly
in the areas of disaster preparedness and breast cancer research.

But Mrs. Cheney has apparently set a precedent by returning to her
paid job after taking time off during the 2000 campaign—and one
that almost by definition involves intellectual controversy.

While Mrs. Cheney’s professional record has covered a broad
range of social and cultural issues, it is her work in the area of
history education that has earned her a reputation for speaking her
mind. That work has won her some measure of admiration, even among
those who do not subscribe to her views. But it has also drawn the most
criticism.

"Her emphasis on history/social studies education has clearly left
its mark," said Jesus Garcia, the president-elect of the National
Council for the Social Studies, an organization that has clashed with
Mrs. Cheney over the group’s advocacy of an integrated, thematic
approach to teaching the subject. "Unfortunately, she has a more
conservative agenda … that doesn’t allow other
perspectives. She’s been extremely divisive."

She began to make that mark with a monograph in 1987, written while
she was at the helm of the NEH, that pointed to a lack of historical
knowledge among the nation’s high school students, which she
blamed on schools and teachers.

A few years later, Mrs. Cheney, who has a doctorate in 19th-century
British literature, announced plans to develop voluntary national
history standards.

A month before the standards were to be unveiled in late 1994, Mrs.
Cheney, who had left her NEH post with the change to a Democratic
administration the year before, wrote a scathing critique of the
document on The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page under
the headline "The End of History."

The piece led to independent reviews of the document. Supporters of
the standards effort, however, charged that Mrs. Cheney’s
appraisal was misleading, and that critical content she had accused the
writers of ignoring, such as references to George Washington and the
U.S. Constitution, were indeed featured throughout the three
volumes.

The standards committee made some minor revisions before releasing
the document nationally, although none of Mrs. Cheney’s
complaints had significant influence on the final product, according to
Gary B. Nash, who headed the standards effort with his colleague at the
National Center for History in the Schools, Charlotte Crabtree. Mr.
Nash said the charges in Mrs. Cheney’s opinion piece came as a
surprise, given her involvement in various stages of the
standards-writing process.

"Lynne Cheney and I never disagreed on the importance of history,"
Mr. Nash said. "But she certainly touched off a firestorm about the
standards. … Now, 10 years later, I can say that the standards
accomplished the goal" of providing a sound framework for history
education nationwide.

The overall standards effort is ultimately credited with having a
broad influence on history and social studies education. It has served
as a model for many state standards documents.

History in Decline?

Nearly a decade later, Mrs. Cheney is still embroiled in the history
debate. She and other scholars have called for an end to the social
studies movement, which they argue undermines the teaching of
history.

President Bush’s "We the People" initiative to strengthen
history education has helped further that effort, Mrs. Cheney said in a
response by e-mail to questions from Education Week. She
declined to be interviewed in person.

But some critics ask how Mrs. Cheney can tout so enthusiastically
the No Child Left Behind law when her passion, history, is being pushed
aside in the curriculum, they say. As schools focus more on math and
reading, the subjects that the law requires students to be tested in,
many teachers are finding less time for other subjects. ("Troubled High School Narrows
Courses," this issue.)

"The stress on reading and math is at the expense of teaching
children their country’s heritage," said Mr. Garcia, a social
studies education professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
"Today, as opposed to 10 years ago, we don’t have more history in
the curriculum because overall it’s being squeezed out."

Mrs. Cheney has not answered those concerns directly. But in an
e-mailed response to a question on that point, she wrote: "I think we
often overlook the fact that reading is a skill that can be practiced
and perfected on all kinds of content.

"There are," she continued, "terrific books about history being
written for even the littlest kids and that time students spend with
them can benefit both reading skills and historical knowledge."

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.